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Sensex Opens Strong; Banking & Metal Stocks Lead

Thu, 9 Feb 09:30 am

Asian markets are higher today as Japanese and Hong Kong shares show gains. The Nikkei 225 is up 0.19% while the Hang Seng is up 0.40%. The Shanghai Composite is trading up by 0.37%. Stock markets in the US ended their previous session on a firm note.

Steel stocks have opened the day in green with Bhushan Steel and Jindal Saw being the most active stocks in this space. According to an article in leading financial daily, India has extended by two months the anti-dumping duty on certain steel products to guard domestic industry from cheap imports.

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The Central Board of Excise and Customs has extended the anti-dumping duties imposed on imports of Hot-rolled and Cold-rolled flat products of alloy or non-alloy steel from People's Republic of China, Japan, Korea RP, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia and Ukraine for another two months. This is a provision to protect the business interests of local manufacturers and to reduce the dependency on imports.

Reportedly, the anti-dumping duty to be paid is the difference between the landed value of the steel products and US$ 594 per tonne.

Net Steel Export by China

As you can see in the above chart, China's exports zoomed post-2012. With tepid domestic demand, China began to export or rather dump their production to other countries, including India.

However, the most prominent question is if the market supply is higher than demand, whether the extension of MIP significantly help the steel industry? (Subscription Required). Sarvajeet Bodas, our research analyst is of the opinion that if demand doesn't grow in the coming months, we may not see a significant improvement in steel realizations despite the protection measures.

Moving on to the news from . According to an article in The Economic Times, Punjab National Bank (PNB) is looking to sell its stake in PNB housing finance and PNB Gilts in the next financial year. However, the bank may not sell stake in its life insurance arm PNB MetLife at this point.

In the quarter ended December, the bank posted a four-fold jump in net profit at Rs 2.07 billion on account of increase in treasury income and decline in cost of deposits.

The bank's asset quality, however, deteriorated further as gross non-performing assets hit 13.70% of the gross advances during third quarter of current fiscal as against 8.47% a year ago. Likewise, net NPAs rose to 9.09% of net advances as of December quarter from 5.86% in the year-ago period. With subdued demand, the credit growth is expected to be at 6-7% in the financial year 2016-17.

Meanwhile, loans worth between Rs 80 billion and Rs 100 billion that were being serviced regularly have turned into special mention accounts 2 (SMA2). SMA are loans on which repayments are overdue for between 61 and 90 days at Punjab National Bank (PNB) as a result of demonetisation.

The total value of SMA2 accounts at the end of December was Rs 190 billion. Among the accounts in the SMA2 category is that of Air India, to which PNB has an exposure of around Rs 10 billion.

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